eugenesis-text

Venturing deeper into the room, he heard voices and heavy machinery. He jogged towards an
archway at the far end of the hall that opened onto a small balcony. The ceiling, only a few metres above,
was heavy with lattice lights and spot-lamps. Seeing what was happening below would mean stepping into
the open, and with the thought of personal fortune burning in his mind, he did just that.
And there they were.
Stretching out almost as far as he could see, lost in the near-infinite chamber below: tens of thousands
of figures. An entire population trapped and cosseted within four whitewashed walls. They were clustered
around hundreds of pea-green spacecraft, shouting orders to each other, stretching and swearing and
spitting.
Quintessons.
‘Well I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘What do you mean’
Mainframe did not take his eyes off screen. ‘Decepticon netware is never simple. These files are
buried under at least four interdependent defence grids. If you make a mistake, the whole thing crashes.’
Blaster turned to Mirage. ‘You’re lucky the data was stored on an outdated disc: anything more
recent and we’d never have been able to access it.’
‘Hey, never say never.’ Mainframe grinned behind his mouth-plate, the only area of his face visible
under the bowl-shaped interface helmet. He moved his head cautiously, exploring the remnants of a
scorched Decepticon cyberscape.
Based on controversial Actuality technology, the new CVR machine was invaluable to the Autobots,
particularly when it came to exploring booby-trapped info-domains. Mainframe had been hooked up for
over an hour. He had unearthed Decepticon strike plans, munitions inventories and causality stats – all of
them years out of date. He had used every trick in the book to pinpoint information relating to the three
cryogenically frozen Decepticons, every Institute-approved sleight-of-hand and side step: back door codes,
confidence programs, backtrack fields, Trojan data-breaks…
It wasn’t until he dusted down a retrieval program created twenty years ago that he’d uncovered the
Holy Grail: a portion of Soundwave’s log tapes from 1986. The majority of entries were beyond retrieval,
but a few could be salvaged. Now, in a junk-filled corner of the Comms Chamber, he scoured the intact
files.
‘I think I’ve got it!’ he yelped.
Mirage stared at the classified information scrolling across the overhead screen. He felt he had a
personal stake in this – after all, it was his negligence that had led to the Decepticons’ reactivation. Now, an
incapacitated Jazz and a stolen Autoshuttle later, they were still out there, and any spilt oil would be on his
hands.
He hated things beyond his control. As soon as Mainframe had decoded the information he would
find Magnus, deliver his verdict on the City and head back to his poky seventh-floor office underneath
Iacon. He thought of life in the Archives Centre; he wondered whether Rodimus had made headway with
the troop inspection; whether Rev-Tone and the others were back on-line; whether Prowl and Perceptor
had told Nightbeat the real reason for his secondment…
The sudden eruption of data onscreen – a mixture of Tarnian and gibberish – focused his thoughts.
Mainframe hoisted the CVR helmet off his head. ‘May I present log entry 001/51/176! I’ve decoded
Soundwave’s report as best I can, but some areas remain indecipherable. You’re getting the abridged
version.’
‘This report was made in January 1986,’ said Mirage. ‘That’s shortly after Optimus Prime’s head was
reunited with his body, but before our search for the Dinobots. Let’s see… Soundwave and Co. had
captured Bumblebee – that puts this around the time of the ‘Ultimate Autobot’ debate – and were heading
back to the Decepticon Fortress when they were attacked by three unidentified Decepticons. The attackers
came out of nowhere and seemed disoriented. Soundwave said they were captured without much of a fight.
He tried to read their minds but found nothing – he calls it “white noise”. He’s made some sort of
footnote… he thinks that they were some kind of Cybertronian upgrade.’
‘A new generation of Decepticons,’ said Blaster. ‘How prescient.’